Does the Right to Arms Impede or Promote Economic Development?

Editor's note: In July of 2001, the United Nations concluded a Conference on
the Illicit Trade in Small Arms and Light Weapons (SALW) in All Its Aspects,
designed to address security and humanitarian threats posed by unlawful trade in
these weapons. The resultant Program of Action called for a follow-up review
conference to be held no later than 2006, and suggested eventually moving toward
a treaty to regulate the international trade of SALW. The United States
supported the goals of the Program of Action because, as negotiated, they did
not undermine American sovereignty or rights enshrined in the Second Amendment.
During the conference, however, delegates from several nations had sought to
expand the scope of the Conference to include restricting the private ownership
of weapons, which has raised concern that U.S. domestic rights could be threatened in the future.

Increased regulation of SALW has received strong endorsement among many in the international community. In the following article, the
authors assess this movement and address some of the substantive arguments presented by its supporters.

Introduction

In the 1960s, the United Nations resolved to "take on the development
challenge."[1] The objectives were eradicating poverty, educating the ignorant, and giving
each human being a broader range of life choices.[2]

Although some regions, such as parts of East Asia, have made spectacular
progress, others, especially Africa, have not. Advocates of prohibiting the
civilian possession of firearms have recently begun attempting to link failed development with the proliferation of Small Arms and Light Weapons (SALW).[3] With the support of UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan, the prohibition community has been conducting an intensive public relations campaign that constantly reinforces the
alleged relationship.[4]

"Small arms" is a term of art used by the international disarmament community.
As used by some gun prohibitionists, the term includes all firearms except heavy machine guns. More narrowly,
"small arms" refers only to military firearms. "Light weapons" encompasses more
powerful portable weapons, such as heavy machine guns, grenade launchers, some mortars, and portable
anti-tank guns.[5]

Although prohibitionist claims are frequently stated in unequivocal terms,
careful researchers acknowledge that the connection between arms and development
is unclear. Even gun prohibitionists such as the authors of Small Arms Survey 2003: Development Denied hedged: "Research on this linkage is in its infancy...At the macro level, simple relationships between
small arms and underdevelopment are extremely difficult to demonstrate."[6]

At the simplest level, there is an obvious connection between SALW and
underdevelopment: SALW are among the weapons used in war. Although wartime can
be a period of economic development in countries which are producing goods for
the war (as in the United States during World War II), it is rare for countries
where combat is taking place to advance economically during the fighting.[7] Likewise, the costs of prosecuting war are high, and war resources would
better serve to promote human development. In addition, the costs of rebuilding
damaged infrastructure are often high, as are the accompanying economic and
human losses.

Of course warfare which removes a tyrannical government can help economic
development in the long run. For example, Western Europe developed very rapidly
in the two decades after liberation from the Nazis, who plundered the region for
their own benefit.

However, the obvious fact that warfare impedes economic development during wartime does not mean that small arms per se impede economic development. Small arms are only some of the many tools used
in warfare; other tools include aircraft carriers, missiles, heavy artillery,
airplanes, poison gas, and atomic bombs. During the Cold War, the United States
procured vast quantities of many types of weapons (including SALW) while enjoying tremendous economic growth. The Soviet
Union also procured enormous weapons stockpiles, while development stagnated,
especially after the 1950s. Accordingly, the most important variable might not
necessarily be the mere presence or procurement of weapons.

Warfare often involves the procurement of large quantities of goods and infrastructure to feed and supply the fighters: food,
utensils, pants, coats, hats, hospitals, medicine, and so on. These war goods also have many peacetime uses, and it would
obviously be foolish to claim that the proliferation of such goods is, in
itself, a cause of underdevelopment.

The same may be said for firearms. After all, in the nineteenth century, both
England and the United States enjoyed phenomenal economic growth, during a period in which both countries had
very few restrictions on firearms, and civilian gun ownership was widespread.[8]

Blaming SALW for development failure serves several political purposes. The
rhetoric attempts to enlist the development community in the arms prohibition movement, and even to divert
development funds into arms confiscation projects. For example, the authors of Small Arms Survey 2003 argue that "if development organizations such as the [World] Bank are to have maximum impact in the alleviation of poverty, they must give
more weight to practical disarmament."[9]

The countries which have been the greatest recipients of development aid, such
as most of sub-Saharan Africa, are worse off today than they were half a century
ago. One of the very few examples of a heavy aid recipient which is making
economic progress is India, and India's current growth seems more related to
outsourcing and international communications than to development aid.

Indeed, development aid has been persuasively critiqued for retarding economic development: the aid tends to flow to the kleptocracies which govern
most of the Third World, and the kleptocracies use the aid to buy political support, particularly among the urban elite. Relatively little aid reaches the
intended beneficiaries; the aid that does reach the needy is controlled by the
kleptocracy, and thus promotes dependence on the corrupt government. Not every international aid program
has been a disaster, and some have been helpful. But, on the whole, development
aid has failed.[10]

Another political constituency with a great interest in blaming SALW for
underdevelopment is Third World governments. Because most Third World countries are governed by force rather than
by consent, Third World governments have an interest in disarming their
subjects.

In this article, we shall demonstrate that underdevelopment is largely the result of poor governance--including governance which
promotes the spread of infectious disease. SALW may exist in underdeveloped countries, but they are generally not a
causal factor in underdevelopment.

Part I of this article provides background on the history of development in the Third World. Part II examines two major impediments
to economic development: the infectious diseases of malaria and AIDS. The former
is a disaster manufactured by First World political correctness; DDT prohibition is scientifically indefensible, and is responsible for millions of deaths every year.[11] The latter is a product of poor leadership that continues to ignore scientific
research, and has created a medical problem of horrific proportions. Malaria and AIDS kill an estimated 4 million people, worldwide annually, between
approximately 7 to 11 times the number killed by SALW.[12]

Part III turns to the heart of the development problem: bad governance.[13] We examine two case studies: Zambia and Kenya. Blaming small arms exacerbates
the problem of poor governance, because the focus on small arms helps bad
governments distract attention from government policies (such as gross
corruption and ethnic persecution) which do cause underdevelopment. By providing
the means to remove harmful governments, SALW may be part of the solution to
underdevelopment.

I. Background

If small arms impede development, then the data should show that development
proceeds faster before the proliferation of small arms than afterwards. However, the data do not support the
hypothesis that more small arms leads to less development.

Scholars have noted that the prevalence of small arms began to increase in the
1970s and 1980s. For example, Alejandro Bendaña, director of the Center for
International Studies in Nicaragua, described the timing of the arms flow into
Latin America: "During the Cold War, hundreds of millions of dollars worth of weapons poured into Central America...After the 1979
Nicaraguan revolution, Central America became a hot battleground of the Cold
War, and the region became armed to the teeth."[14]

The prohibition community agrees that SALW availability dramatically increased at the conclusion of the Cold War in 1989. The
first edition of Small Arms Survey, published in 2001, noted: "There have been ominous reports documenting the
proliferation of millions of small arms and light weapons as the world's major
military powers reduced their armed forces or, as in the case of the former
Soviet Union, collapsed outright."[15] According to Michael Klare, Director of the Five College Program in Peace and
World Security Studies, "the end of the Cold War has left the world with huge
quantities of surplus weapons--many of which have begun to seep into world
markets via licit and illicit channels."[16] Disarmament activist Lora Lumpe explained: "Several trends in the 1990s gave
prominence to the issue of gun-running. Newly opened borders, massive post-Cold
War arms surpluses and the rapid expansion of free trade contributed to arms
availability and the ease of smuggling."[17]

Clearly the proliferation of SALW in the 1980s escalated during the 1990s. If the presence of SALW were the key impediment to
development, then economic development[18]should have faltered only after the increased availability of such weapons in
the 1980s, and especially in the 1990s. However, the failure of development in much of the Third World was
well-established by the early 1970s.[19]

A. Latin America

Referring to Latin America, Albert Hirschman, a developmental economist at the School of Social Science of the Institute for
Advanced Study, asked in 1961, "where lies the responsibility for our lag? In
ourselves or in the outside world which exploits us?"[20]

The same year, President John F. Kennedy, addressing the failure of older
programs, created the Alliance for Progress, an assistance program for Latin
America "designed to make the benefits of increasing abundance available to
all." Congress allocated $500 million for the new effort and President Kennedy hoped
that "the close of this decade will mark the beginning of a new era…."[21]A few years later, Lauchlin Currie, a world-renowned economist, observed: "The
accelerated rate of deterioration [of development] during the past four
years...is particularly alarming, as it coincides exactly with the period of the
Alliance for Progress."[22] Currie noted, "In Colombia...there is considerable evidence that not only
has inequality grown but that the condition of the peasant has worsened…."[23]

In 1971, ten years after Kennedy began the Alliance for Progress, Raúl
Prebisch, an international development economist, remarked:

"Thirty years ago you could have said ‘Well, let's wait for a few decades; this
process of development will gradually improve the lot of the whole population.'
But that has not come to pass."[24]

In 1976, Celso Furtado, Brazil's most influential economist of the 20th century, noted about the 1950s and 1960s: "the figures show that the pace of
growth of the regional economy has not even been sufficient to maintain the
region's relative position in the world economy."[25]

Significantly, the disappointing results of failed development in Latin America all occurred prior to the proliferation of weapons in
that region. During the 1950s and 1960s, there were many armed changes of
government in Latin America, but they were mostly military coups, and therefore
unrelated to the modern campaign against arms possession by civilians. There were some cases of long-running revolutionary warfare--most notably
Ché Guevera's failed effort to lead a Communist revolution in Colombia. However,
a few cases of unsuccessful revolution in Latin America cannot explain the
region-wide economic failure in the 1950s and 1960s.

B. Sub-Saharan Africa

A similar pattern of failed development prior to the influx of SALW can be seen
in sub-Saharan Africa.[26] The Lagos Plan of Action, adopted in 1980, explained, "The effect of
unfulfilled promises of global development strategies has been more sharply felt
in Africa....Thus, Africa is unable to point to any significant growth rate, or
satisfactory index of general well-being, in the past 20 years."[27]

The 1981 World Bank report was gloomy about "Africa's disappointing economic
performance during the past two decades."[28] The report stated: "for most African countries, and for a majority of the
African population, the record is grim and it is no exaggeration to talk of
crisis. Slow overall economic growth, sluggish agricultural performance coupled
with rapid rates of population increase, and balance-of-payments and fiscal
crises--these are dramatic indicators of economic trouble."[29]

William Easterly (professor of economics at New York University and Senior
Fellow at the Center for Global Development) and Ross Levine (professor with the Finance Department at the University of Minnesota) also confirmed the early failures of
African development: "Africa's economic history since 1960 fits the classical
definition of tragedy: potential unfulfilled, with disastrous consequences."[30]

C. Summary

Development failure long pre-dated the influx of SALW into undeveloped
countries. Therefore, the lack of development cannot logically be attributed to SALW in the hands of citizens. In fact,
the World Bank stated: "the key root cause of conflict is the failure of
economic development."[31] In other words, the arms prohibition community has causality backwards: the "key root
cause of conflict," and hence the reason for the use of SALW in such conflicts,
is the absence of economic development.

The World Bank elaborated: "Economic development is central to reducing the
global incidence of conflict...."[32] The Bank described the vicious cycle of "the conflict trap," wherein countries
which have already sunk into violent conflict tend to see such conflicts recur.[33] However, when the arms prohibition community describes such conflicts, it invariably casts the blame on ownership of SALW by so-called "non-state actors"
(the prohibitionists' term for "citizens"). As the Bank more accurately observed: "War retards development, but
conversely, development retards war."[34]

Accordingly, one effective strategy in reducing armed conflict would be to
address the root causes of the conflict, by ending the terrible economic
conditions which cause the desperate resort to civil war.

II. The Burden of Infectious Disease on Development

The hindrance to development from infectious and parasitic diseases[35] dwarfs any drag on development accruing to the civilian possession of SALW.
According to the World Health Organization (WHO), in the year 2002, infectious
and parasitic diseases killed 11,122,131 people, worldwide.[36] Shockingly, the United Nations has taken a lead role in hindering the
prevention of malaria.

A. Malaria

Malaria infects up to a tenth of the world's population,[37] who suffer 300 million to 500 million episodes each year.[38] In the process, it destroys much of the human capital necessary for economic
growth. According to the WHO's statistics, malaria alone was responsible for
1,222,180 deaths,[39] but the annual figure may sometimes rise to up to 3 million deaths.[40] The World Health Organization reported that, of the deaths in 2002, 1,098,999
were children under the age of five.[41]

The high number of deaths are only the beginning of malaria's devastating
impact on development. Because the disease does not discriminate between rich or
poor, it deters investment in areas where malaria is endemic. The labor market uncertainty caused by the risks of malaria deaths often causes farmers to
plant crops which are quick and easy to harvest, rather than crops which would
yield greater income to the farmer.

The link between malaria and poverty is well-established. In 1958, Nobel
Laureate in Medicine T. H. Weller stated: "It has long been recognized that a
malarious community is an impoverished community."[42Or as the World Health Organization stated, malaria is "a major constraint to economic development."[43

John Luke Gallup [44] and Jeffrey D. Sachs [45] reported that "countries with intensive malaria grew 1.3% less per person per
year, and a 10% reduction in malaria was associated with 0.3% higher growth." [46] Further, "Not only are malarial countries poor, but economic growth in malarial countries over the past quarter century has been dismal. Growth of income per
capita from 1965 to 1990 for countries with severe malaria has been 0.4% per
year, while average growth for other countries has been 2.3%, over five times
higher...More than a third of the countries with severe malaria (11 out of 29) had
negative growth from 1965 to 1990." [47]

Every year, mortality from malaria kills approximately twice as many people as
do all small arms and light weapons.[48] If we make assumptions which maximize the total numbers of SALW non-fatal
woundings, malaria morbidity[49] is between 46 and 77 times greater than SALW morbidity.[50]

There exists a range of disability for malaria survivors. The largest segment
of malaria victims is young sub-Saharan African children, who comprise 70
percent of malaria deaths. Many of the children who survive malaria become
learning-and neurologically-disabled.[51] According to Joel Breman of the National Institutes of Health, there are about
600,000 persons each year who contract the cerebral form of malaria;[52] about 5-20 percent (approximately 30,000-120,000) of the survivors "may have
gross neurologic sequelae" such as "generalized seizures, paralysis, speech and
behavior disorders, hearing impairment, blindness, epilepsy and cerebral palsy….
Decreased ‘executive functions' (i.e. the ability to initiate, plan, and carry
out tasks) were some of the other deficits found."[53]

Other researchers have found that malaria in pregnant women predisposes them to
bear low-weight babies, many of whom also have lingering medical complications.[54] It has also been recently discovered that women with malaria who are also
HIV-positive are more likely to transmit HIV to their unborn children.[55] According to the British Broadcasting Corporation, "Malaria is one of the
greatest barriers to Africa's economic growth...."[56] The problem is likely to worsen, because the malaria bacteria are increasingly
resistant to existing drugs, and there is insufficient research being conducted
for new drugs. UCLA's Diane Birnbaumer and Anne Rutkowski noted: "Both the sharp
increase in plasmodium resistance to existing antimalarials and the dearth of
research dedicated to the development of new antimalarials signal the potential
for an uncontrolled malarial epidemic."[57]

As the world teeters on the verge of "an uncontrolled malarial epidemic,"
diverting development resources into gun confiscation does not appear to be a
wise use of resources.

In some areas, malaria could be greatly reduced by introducing fish which eat
mosquitoes.[58] This strategy is not practical on a large scale at the present time. By the
time it becomes viable in the future, if ever, millions of lives will have been
lost.

The sine qua non of preventing the imminent "uncontrolled malarial epidemic" is DDT.

It is arguable that broad-spectrum use of DDT
(dichlorodiphenyl-trichloroethane) for agricultural purposes during the mid-20thcentury was harmful to the environment. But rather than limiting DDT use, the
United Nations is actively encouraging a worldwide ban on DDT.[59] Donald Roberts, professor in the Department of Preventive Medicine/Biometrics, Uniformed Services University of the Health Sciences, warns:

We are now facing the unprecedented event of eliminating, without meaningful
debate, the most cost-effective chemical we have for the prevention of malaria. The health of hundreds of millions of persons in malaria-endemic countries should be given greater
consideration before proceeding further with the present course of action.[60]

Roberts and his co-researchers demonstrated that there is a "powerful
relationship between DDT-sprayed houses and malaria rates…when large numbers of
houses are sprayed with DDT, malaria rates decline…."[61] They explain the difference in safety between the spot use of DDT in homes and the previous
indiscriminate use of the chemical in agriculture. They point out that, "On a
landscape scale, a sprayed house represents an infinitesimally small spot
treatment of a closed and protected environment (the house)."[62]

Currently, the United Nations and the gun-prohibition NGOs are trying to
eliminate guns from civilian homes, because of the danger that they supposedly cause to children. But in terms of the
number of children killed, brain-damaged, or otherwise crippled, malaria-bearing
mosquitoes are a vastly greater threat to the children of the world. Yet the
United Nations, by promoting DDT prohibition, is attempting to deprive Third World families of a major tool which they could use to protect the
children in the home from malaria.

The callousness of the UN's DDT-prohibition campaign is almost unfathomable.
The environmental risks of in-home spraying of DDT are slight; the devastation
of malaria is enormous.

B. HIV/AIDS

In 2002, HIV/AIDS was responsible for 2,821,472 deaths.[63] Thus, AIDS kills between 5 and 6 times as many people worldwide as do SALW.[64] Over 370,000 of the annual AIDS deaths are children under the age of 5.[65] The death toll from AIDS will keep rising in the foreseeable future because
the number of new HIV infections is increasing faster than the number of persons
dying. For example, in sub-Saharan Africa, there were 2.3 million deaths from
HIV/AIDS in 2003, and about 3.2 million new cases diagnosed.[66] According to Peter Piot, head of the Joint United Nations Program on HIV/ AIDS
(UNAIDS), "We are only at the beginning of the impact of AIDS, certainly in Africa."[67]

In Malawi, where the average life expectancy was projected to rise to 57 in
2010, life expectancy has now been revised downward to 43 years. [68] The BBC reported that "the country's worst famine in living memory" was, in large part, the result of
AIDS. [69] Thengo Maloya, minister for lands, physical planning and surveys, admitted
that, because of AIDS, his office suffered a deficit of 800 employees. Workers
who remained were physically weakened and unable to work regular hours. [70]

The staggering toll of AIDS deaths has caused a decline in the Human Development Index, because one of the factors comprising the
HDI is life expectancy.[71] According to Human Development Report 2003, "In recent decades the greatest shock to development has been HIV/AIDS....By
killing and incapacitating adults in the prime of their lives, it can throw
development off course....Much of the decline [of the HDI] in the 1990s can be
traced to the spread of HIV/AIDS...."[72]

In addition, much of the decline in the rate of economic growth can be traced
to HIV/AIDS. According to the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United
Nations (FAO), "Recent estimates indicate that the pandemic has already reduced
national economic growth rates across Africa by 2 to 4 percent a year."[73

The number of deaths and the debilitation from illness directly impact
developing economies by reducing the quality and the quantity of the work force.[74Food production is a prime example. For example, in Zambia, it was recently
noted that there was a 53 percent reduction in crops planted by farming families
who had a member chronically ill with AIDS.[75 The FAO reported that up to 70 percent of farms have lost workers due to
HIV/AIDS.[76 Also according to the FAO, "Hunger is on the rise again after falling steadily during the first half of the
1990s...."[77

While AIDS has been increasing, armed conflict has been decreasing. Monty
Marshall[78] and Ted Gurr[79] have documented a dramatic decline in the number and magnitude of armed conflicts in the
late 1990s. Therefore episodes of SALW violence decreased in the late 1990s,
compared to the first half of that decade. It is illogical to claim that the
recent decline in the agricultural sector of Africa's economy in Africa is due to SALW;
to the contrary, armed conflict using SALW has dramatically declined during the
same period when the devastation from AIDS has dramatically risen.

Malaria has been retarding development for decades, and now AIDS is further
impeding development. The severity of the African AIDS problem is widely recognized: "The scale of devastation
caused by HIV/AIDS is unmatched…."[80 "By continuing to devastate Africa's economies, communities, and development, HIV/AIDS has undoubtedly become Africa's biggest
challenge."[81] "[T]he HIV-AIDS pandemic [is]....the paramount threat to development in the
region."[82] "AIDS has vastly compounded Africa's struggle for development....The effects of
AIDS in Africa are eroding decades of development efforts....AIDS is now recognized as one of the developing
world's largest impediments...."[83] "The churches in Africa consider HIV/AIDS to constitute the biggest challenge
to their mission...."[84]

This unchecked epidemic is largely due to the failure of global leadership. In
2004, the XV International AIDS Conference in Bangkok, Thailand, included a leadership symposium which admitted that failure: "We acknowledge that we have failed to provide enough information, education, prevention tools and technologies, treatment, care and support. Our inability to
ensure human rights, equity, opportunities, and a supportive and enabling
environment for all has helped to fuel the epidemic."[85]

Much of this failure is due to government corruption which has starved local
communities of needed funds by siphoning off huge percentages of donated monies;
for example, up to 30 percent of World Bank funds donated for AIDS drug are stolen by
corrupt governments.[86] The theft has created an atmosphere of mistrust among donors that has led to a
reduction in funding.[87]

These serious problems are hardly acknowledged by UN Secretary-General Kofi
Annan. A recent report by Annan[88provoked the following response from the Canadian HIV/AIDS Legal Network:

The focus on leadership obfuscates underlying issues of governance and
accountability of leadership and government in countries with a weak response to HIV/AIDS. The Report
does not address the reasons why donors may be reluctant to provide the necessary
resources to governments, including poor governance, corruption and incompetence in managing
funds.[89]

President Thabo Mbeki of South Africa exemplifies government obstruction to
efforts that might ameliorate the HIV/AIDS epidemic. According to the New York Times, his most glaring failure is "his obstinate refusal to urgently address his nation's AIDS epidemic while H.I.V. spread to more than five million
South Africans."[90] Instead, Mbeki denies that HIV causes AIDS, and has restricted the use of
anti-HIV drugs.[91]

It is not just the people of South Africa who suffer poor leadership. According
to Dr. Khin Saw Win,

It is now well accepted in public health circles that the Burmese HIV epidemic
is one of the world's fastest growing and most pervasive….The junta's refusal to
recognize the epidemics [sic] clearly indicated that this political and humanitarian crisis is caused by their massive mismanagement,
corruption and policy failure.[92]

IV. Good Governance

The most fundamental cause of underdevelopment is bad governance. Warfare and
SALW are merely symptoms of the disease of bad governance. In the right hands,
SALW are the cure for the disease, and hence the cure for the most important
cause of underdevelopment.[93]

Theoretically, countries like Zambia or Kenya could have reasonable gun laws
which say: "Everyone may receive a gun permit, unless he or she has one of the
following disqualifying convictions…." Indeed, the gun laws in Britain's former African
colonies often approximated this statutory model, based on Britain's gun laws of
the 1920s. The problem is that in a country with pervasive corruption and police
abuse, it is difficult to make a gun licensing system work fairly. The licensing
system is more likely to inhibit good people (peaceful political dissidents, or
ordinary citizens who can not afford the necessary bribes) than to prevent evildoers from acquiring arms (at least the evil-doers who are part of organized
crime groups, and already adept at bribing the police).

In any case, the security concerns of tyrannical government will still be paramount. As a study by the National Academies of
Science recently observed, in an American context, "Because of the pervasiveness
of the variety of legal and illegal means of acquiring them, it is difficult to keep firearms from
people barred by law from possessing them."[94]

However, the existence of black markets does not mean that every person who
legitimately needs a gun may be able to acquire one. Twentieth century history
is replete with histories of genocide victims who were not able to arm
themselves, or who, like the Jews in Eastern Europe, were extremely underarmed.

In this article, we do not mean to settle the question of whether the U.S.
government, or other humanitarian-minded entities, should actively supply arms
to freedom-fighters against tyrannical regimes, or to ordinary citizens in
tyrannical regimes, who might at least be able to use arms to resist further
depredations by government-allied thugs.

But it should be recognized that as long as government corruption and
self-dealing persist, economic progress will be very difficult, or even
impossible. As long as the international community tolerates these conditions,
underdevelopment will persist.

As UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan has observed: "good governance is perhaps
the single most important factor in eradicating poverty and promoting
development."[95] As the UN now acknowledges, human rights and economic liberty are essential to
economic development: "Good governance is essential for sustainable development. Sound economic policies, solid democratic institutions responsive to the needs of the
people and improved infrastructure are the basis for sustained economic growth,
poverty eradication and employment creation."[96]

A. Hindered Development in the Absence of Armed Conflict and SALW: The Case of
Zambia

Zambia is an example of a country in which development should have been robust,
but was just the opposite, despite the absence of SALW and armed conflict, and
despite relatively low violence rates.[97] When Zambia achieved independence in 1964, there was reason for hope. Rich
with copper deposits,[98] and with a healthy agricultural sector, Zambia received $3.2 billion in development aid from the World Bank.[99]

Zambia's people are now among the poorest in the world. With the country's debt
at $5.4 billion as of December 2002,[100] with HIV/AIDS and malaria decimating the productive population,[101] life expectancy has dropped to 33 years for men, and 32 years for women.[102] Eighty percent of the population live on less than a dollar per day.[103] According to the World Bank, in the early 1990s more than 40 percent of
Zambia's population was undernourished; by 1999-2001, undernourishment increased
to almost 50 percent.[104]

In Zambia, it would be inaccurate to claim that the presence of SALW
contributed to the decline of the economy. While Zambia does have some violent
crime, its effect pales compared to other development obstacles, such as
excessive government control over the economy[105]--a problem which has afflicted most of sub-Saharan Africa since independence.[106]

Poor governance--specifically theft of the country's resources for personal and
political gain by the country's leaders--has greatly hindered development.
Zambia's history of corruption dates back to its first dictator-president, Kenneth Kaunda.[107] Kaunda's long record of thievery has been eclipsed, however, by his successor,
dictator-president Frederick Chiluba. According to the BBC, Chiluba has "bled
the national treasury" and "is diverting state funds into privately held
accounts."[108]

Corruption is not limited to the upper echelons of society. The national
government is plagued by "ghosts"--people on the payroll who do not exist, and
yet whose salaries are diverted. As the BBC noted, "In the past month, the main
Zambian civil servants' union has called for a crackdown on what it says are
more than 20,000 ghost workers, contributing to a budget over-run of 600bn
kwacha (£80m; $132m)."[109]

Current President Levy Mwanawasa, who was sworn into office in January 2002,
has attempted to repair the damaged economy, and has made revitalization of the country's agricultural sector
his priority.[110]

If Zambia today has a problem with arms, the problem appears to involve a
violent, unreformed, and abusive police force. The Times of Zambia wrote in December 2004:

The high-handedness exhibited by members of the Zambia Police Service during
the failed demonstration last Monday says a lot about how much the people's police have
veered off from the reforms embarked on several years back….the amount of force
applied on demonstrators appears to heighten fears that after all not much has changed at all. There was
no iota of a show for respect for human rights during the operation on the failed demonstration. With impunity, defenceless people were
clubbed and kicked, some of them struck with hard objects and they bled.[111]

B. Hindered Development: The Case of Kenya

Kenya, rich in natural resources, is another example of a country in which
development should have proceeded robustly but did not. Like Zambia, Kenya imposed centralized state planning,
under the pretext of efficiency and fairness; as the Kenyan government wrote in
1965, "African socialism must rely on planning to determine the appropriate uses
of productive resources…."[112]

In practice, centralized control of the economy became a mechanism for the
government and its allies to engage in self-dealing. From the beginning of
independence from Great Britain in 1963, the country's first president, Jomo
Kenyatta, ruled in a brutally repressive manner, eliminated political rivals, and abused the power of government in order to favor political and ethnic
cronies.[113] The single-party rule imposed by Kenyatta made corruption endemic.[114]

Kenyatta's successor, President Daniel arap Moi continuted the practice during
his 24-year reign. The BBC blamed Moi for "exacerbating the culture of
corruption that has crippled Kenya's economic development."[115] Moi and other corrupt officials siphoned over four billion dollars out of the
country.[116]

It has been estimated by the BBC that the cost of corruption in Kenya is $1
billion each year--nearly one-fourth of the country's annual budget.[117] A survey by Transparency International found that every month an ordinary Kenyan must pay an
average of 16 bribes, just to carry on normal life.[118]

Corruption became so grotesque that, by 2001, the World Bank and the
International Monetary Fund cut off the flow of money to the Kenyan kleptocracy.
In December 2002, Mwai Kibaki won the presidency in a landslide, giving him a
mandate to curb the corruption that has plagued the country. Kibaki admitted
that "Corruption has been one of the key problems with governance in the
country...."[119] Even Kenya's top judges are corrupt; for the right price, a murderer or a
rapist can buy his or her way out of trouble.[120] Kenya also suffers from the problem of "ghost" workers.[121] Corruption remains a persistent problem, and the civil "service" continues to
loot the nation.[122]

Like Zambia, Kenya can hardly blame its four-decade development disaster on the
ownership of SALW by "non-state actors." Kenya has seen occasional tribal
conflicts. But as Gurr observed, "There is much evidence that the fighting was
deliberately instigated by the government...."[123President/dictator Daniel arap Moi promoted violent ethnic unrest, because
tribal conflicts distracted the majority population directing their justifiable
anger at abusive, centralized state power.[124]

In post-colonial Kenya, the most significant perpetrators of armed killings
have been the Kenyan police. For example, in 1991, up to ninety percent of
people shot dead in Kenya were shot by police.[125] As the BBC reported, President Moi "kept the Kenyan police busy rounding up all
suspected enemies of his regime."[126] The police force remains extremely corrupt and violent, and prone to torture,
rape and murder.[127]

Today, Kenya does suffer a great deal of criminal violence involving SALW. But the root cause, suggested the BBC, is "mass
unemployment."[128]

Kenya's weapons laws, however, mean that "Most security guards in Kenya are armed with wooden clubs (rungus) and whistles while others have bows and arrows. On the other hand, criminals
are armed with guns that have found their way into the country from the Horn of
Africa, especially Somalia."[129]

Ordinary Kenyans are not even allowed to possess bows and arrows. Kenya's
Coordinator of the National Campaign Against Drug Abuse (Nacada), Joseph Kaguthi, has "called for the repeal
of laws barring Kenyans from keeping bows and arrows in their homes, saying this
would enable them to defend themselves against robbers, who were drug
abusers…Kenyans had become defenceless in the face of increasing crime….Kaguthi
said laws that bar the carrying of traditional weapons were applied
discriminately…"[130]

Once known as "the jewel of Africa," Kenya's current economic and crime
disaster is the result of four decades of tyranny. In retrospect, it was a
mistake for the world diplomatic community, including the United Nations, to treat Jomo Kenyatta, Daniel
arap Moi, Kenneth Kaunda, and Frederick Chiluba as if they were legitimate heads
of state, when they were in truth nothing more than extraordinarily successful
organized crime bosses.

Conclusion

The Small Arms Survey 2003: Development Denied argues that firearms ownership by so-called "non-state actors" stunts human development.[131] We suggest instead that corrupt and dictatorial government is a better
explanation of underdevelopment. We have documented a reduction in annual growth rates by between 3.3 and 5.3 percent as a result of African
government malfeasance on dealing with malaria and AIDS.

The 2004 annual report of the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United
Nations (FAO) highlights the man-made tragedy of underdevelopment: "Chronic
hunger plagues 852 million people worldwide…Hunger and malnutrition cause
tremendous human suffering, kill more than five million children every year, and cost developing countries billions of dollars in lost
productivity and national income."[132]

As Article 25 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights [133] states, "Everyone has the right to a standard of living adequate for the
health and well-being of himself and of his family, including food, clothing…."
The governments which keep their victim populations hungry and diseased are the
true obstacles to development. Empowering victim populations is an essential
precondition to development, and dis-arming victim populations, leaving them helpless against tyrants, simply makes
things worse.

On the outdoor pavilion of the UN grounds in New York City is a huge sculpture
of a revolver with a knotted barrel.[134 The sculpture symbolizes the UN's current efforts to disarm the people of the
world (or as the UN calls them, "non-state actors"). We suggest that it is time
to discard that twisted sculpture which celebrates the destruction of a human
right.

The UN and the rest of the international community should stop trying to disarm
the victims of tyranny. It is time for the international community to return its
attention to the noble goals on which the UN was founded--the protection and
advancement of human rights for all--in order to create conditions that optimize
the potential for development of all the peoples and all their countries.

* David B. Kopel is the Research Director, Independence Institute, Golden,
Colorado.
www.davekopel.org.
He is the author of The Samurai, the Mountie, and the Cowboy: Should America Adopt the Gun Controls
of Other Democracies? (1992). Co-author of Gun Control and Gun Rights (NYU Pr. 2002). Editor-in-Chief of the Journal on Firearms & Public Policy. In 1981-82, Kopel served as head of the Brown University chapter of
Oxfam-America, an international aid and relief organization. His writings on
international firearms issues have appeared in the S.A.I.S. Review and the
Small Arms and Human Security Bulletin. Paul Gallant is a Senior Fellow at the Independence Institute. Joanne D. Eisen is a Senior Fellow at the Independence
Institute.
www.independenceinstitute.org.
She is co-author (with Kopel and Gallant) of numerous articles on international
gun policy in publications such as the Texas Review of Law & Politics, the UMKC Law Review, National Review Online, and Brown Journal of World Affairs.

The authors gratefully acknowledge the generous advice and comments of Dr.
Jeffrey Miron, Professor of Economics, Boston University. We especially emphasize that the opinions expressed in this
article are the authors' alone, as are any errors. The authors would like to
dedicate this Article to the memory of Alan G. Eisen, a devoted husband who
admired and supported Joanne's scholarship, and whose love of freedom and truth continues to inspire us.

Footnotes

2 See AMARTYA SEN, DEVELOPMENT AS FREEDOM xii (2000)("Development consists of the removal of various types of unfreedoms that leave people
with little choice and little opportunity of exercising their reasoned agency.") See also LAUCHLIN CURRIE, OBSTACLES TO DEVELOPMENT 2 (1967); UNITEDNATIONSDEVELOPMENTPROGRAMME, HUMANDEVELOPMENTREPORT1995 11 (1995) ("Human development thus has two sides. One is the formation of
human capabilities--such as improved health, knowledge and skills. The other is
the use people make of their acquired capabilities--for productive purposes, for leisure or for
being active in cultural, social and political affairs.").

3SMALLARMSSURVEY2003: DEVELOPMENTDENIED3 (2003)( "This edition of the Survey documents how small arms availability
and misuse can undermine the prospects for human development.") Small Arms Survey
(SAS) describes itself as "an independent research project located at the
Graduate Institute of International Studies in Geneva, Switzerland." Since 2001,
it has annually published a SMALLARMSSURVEY. Each yearly volume is widely quoted in the disarmament community, and is devoted to negative aspects of civilian possession of firearms.

4 See, e.g., United Nations: Ma. Ceres P. Doyo, Small Arms, Wrong Hands, PHILIPPINEDAILYINQUIRER, Oct. 23, 2003 (Annan: "In short, the excessive accumulation and illicit trade
of small arms is threatening international peace and security, dashing hopes for social and economic
development, and jeopardizing prospects of democracy and human rights."); Secretary-General Calls for Redoubled Efforts to Curb ‘Global Scourge' that
Kills 60 People an Hour, as Biennial Meeting opens on Small Arms, M2 PRESSWIRE, July 8, 2003 (Kofi Annan: "Less quantifiable, but no less palpable, were the
wider consequences of small arms proliferation, in terms of conflicts fueled, peacekeepers threatened, aid denied, respect for law undermined and development stunted."); Unless Adequately Addressed, Proliferation of Small Arms, Mercenaries Will
Continue to Pose Severe Threat to West Africa, SG Says, SG/SM/8641 SC/7695 AFR/587, Mar. 18, 2003 (Secretary General's office: "The
uncontrolled proliferation of small arms and light weapons...impedes political,
economic and social development."); Center for Defense Information Weekly Defense Monitor, Feb. 11, 1999 (quoting Annan: "These weapons [small arms] of personal destruction impair economic and social progress and impede our best development
efforts."); United Nations Development Programme, Development Can Help Curb Small Arms Trade, UNDP Tells UN Conference, Mar. 19, 2001 (Larry de Boice, Deputy Director of the UNDP Emergency Response
Division: "The proliferation of arms...will prevent our development objectives from being reached.").

Government officials: Paul Eavis & David Mepham, Small Arms: A Barrier to Development, FIN. TIMES(London), Jan. 14, 2003 ("Last year's Group of Eight communiqué, heavily
influenced by the UK, identified the proliferation of small arms as a
significant barrier to development progress in Africa."); New Campaign vs. Small Arms, BUSINESSWORLD, May 7, 2003 (Canadian ambassador Robert Collette: "Widespread small
arms…[are] also a very real threat to economic development...."); Short Calls for Action to Stamp Out Illegal Guns Trade, PRESSASSOCIATION, Jan. 14, 2003 (According to British International Development Secretary, Clare Short, "Small arms and light
weapons…undermine development."); Gambia; Transparency in Arms Transfer Advocated; VP Calls for ‘Greater
Accountability', AFRICA NEWS, June 9, 2003 (Gambian Vice President Isatou Njie-Saidy claiming that firearms and violence cause "a series of set-backs for development." Ousman Badjie, chairman of The Gambia's National Commission Against Small Arms, claiming that trafficking of small arms must be
stopped: "‘This must now be changed and replaced by a culture of peace if we are
to attain meaningful development...."); Isaac Essel, Metal Detectors for Borders, ACCRAMAIL(Ghana), June 26, 2003 (Hackman Owusu-Agyemang, Minister of Interior, called
"for the urgent need to make Ghana arms-free, which is a prerequisite for peace,
safety, stability as well as the attraction of local and foreign direct
investment for accelerated development."); Kenya: North Rift Awash with Illicit Arms, AFRICANEWS, Mar. 30, 2003, quoting JAN KAMENJU, M. SINGO& F. WAIRAGU, TERRORIZEDCITIZENS: PROFILING SMALLARMS ANDINSECURITY IN THENORTHRIFTREGION OFKENYA (Nairobi, Kenya: Security Research & Information Centre, 2003)("The ready availability of these weapons undermines security, erodes prospects of development, contributes to social disintegration and makes the resort
to violence more likely and more deadly."); Kenya Starts Destroying Illicit Small Arms, AGENCEFRANCEPRESSE, Mar. 15, 2003 (Kenyan Vice President Michael Wamalwa: "Today we have launched
the destruction of 1,000 assorted small arms and light weapons. It is my sincere
hope that this event will become an enduring milestone in our concerted efforts
to create an arms-free region with a conducive environment for sustained
development and human security."); Jerry Ekandjo, Minister of Home Affairs of
the Republic of Namibia, Statement at the First Biennial Meeting of the States on the Implementation of the Programme of Action of the 2001 United Nations Conference on the Illicit Trade in Small Arms and Light Weapons in All its Aspects
(July 7, 2003) ("Development and progress for the betterment of the lots of our peoples, particularly in many of the developing
countries is kept at bay by the use of these weapons."); UK Government: UK Leads Global Effort to Combat Proliferation and Misuse of Small Arms
and Light Weapons, M2 PRESSWIRE, Jan. 14, 2003 ("Easy access to these weapons creates conflict and undermines
post-conflict reconstruction and long-term sustainable development."); Controlling the Proliferation of Small Arms and Light Weapons, News from Senator Dianne Feinstein, July 26, 2001 ("I believe that the global flood of small
arms is a real and pressing threat to peace, development, democracy, human rights, and U.S. national security interests around the world.").

NGOs: IANSA, Implementing the Programme of Action 2003: Action by States and Civil Society, at 14: ("small arms and light weapons (SALW)...escalate and exacerbate conflicts, obstruct achievement of peace
and good governance and undermine efforts to promote development."); Made-in-USA Guns Widely Available in Mexico, JOIN TOGETHERONLINE, Oct. 29, 2003 (Jessica Galeria, Latin American coordinator for IANSA:
"Made-in-U.S.A. guns continue to fuel conflicts, exacerbate poverty, and impede development.") ("IANSA" stands for
"International Action Network on Small Arms." IANSA is the lead non-government
organization coordinator for the international gun prohibition movement); East Africa Economy Stunted by Flow of Illegal Small Arms: Experts, AGENCEFRANCEPRESSE, Nov. 20, 2002 ("East Africa's economic development is stunted by the flow of
illegal small arms in the region…experts attending a conference in the Ethiopian
capital [sic] warned. ‘The broad proliferation of small arms is a constant
threat and a constant hindrance for the development of the region,' Kiflemariam
Gebrewold of the Bonn International Centre for Conversion (BICC) said late
Tuesday."); Small Arms Issues in Different Regions of Ethiopia – Local Small Arms Control:
Possible, to What Extent?(Bonn International Center for Conversion, 2001), at 2 ("What are the effects
of small arms and light weapons in Somali Region?. . .They impede development
efforts."); PanAfrica; Illicit Arms Still Proliferating, Peacemaker Reminds Africans, AFRICANEWS, Sept. 29, 2003 (Peter Batchelor, Project Director of Small Arms Survey: "The availability and misuse of small arms in Africa have undermined the continent's development prospects.").

Media: Raenette Taljaard, Small Arms Proliferation Also Threatens Global Stability, BUSINESSDAY(South Africa), Oct. 8, 2003: ("Small arms are intertwined with other
challenges such as sustainable development…."); Ghana: Radio Commentary Urges Curbing of Small Arms Trafficking in Subregion, GBC RADIO1, ACCRA, June 13, 2003 ("The misuse of small arms has not only succeeded in disturbing
the social and political order of a number of countries, but also economic development in these countries is killed towards arms procurement."); West Africa; Gambia Hosts Regional Small Arms Seminar, AFRICANEWS, June 3, 2003 ("the catastrophic costs to social and economic development of the deadly trade in small arms.").

6SMALLARMSSURVEY2003: DEVELOPMENTDENIED5. See also Tackling Poverty by Reducing Armed Violence, Department for International Development, Recommendations from a Wilton Park
Workshop, Apr. 14-16, 2003, at 11, 13 ("There is a clear need for more evidence
based on research and analysis to back up the assertion that availability and
use of SALW undermines development, and that programmes to control SALW can significantly contribute to the achievement of development targets such as the MDGs [Millennium Development Goals]…A lack of
relevant information was identified as a key reason for lack of engagement by
development agencies."),
http://www.smallarmsnet.org/
Reports/wiltonpark.pdf.

7

See FRANCES STEWART, VALPYFITZGERALD& ASSOCIATES, WAR AND UNDERDEVELOPMENT1 (2001) ("War in general, and civil war in particular, is one of the main causes of human suffering and economic
underdevelopment.").

Unlike the humanitarian community, development-oriented organizations have the potential to respond practically to small arms issues. Where humanitarian actors should concentrate on
accumulating evidence of the impacts by tightening reporting procedures and
undertaking focused studies, development actors should be developing practical
interventions to reduce the demand for weapons. Fortunately, an incipient
response is emerging within the development community.

Tackling Poverty by Reducing Armed Violence, at 17 ("In view of the obstacles of integrating SALW controls into
development policy and programmes, and the limited progress so far, it is clear
that those most concerned with wide availability and use of SALW need to do more
to engage development agencies. This must include further development of
evidence, arguments, and best practices that the development community will find useful and compelling.");
Id. at 20 ("Change the language of the SALW community: A recurring
recommendation...was the need to revolutionise the language of the SALW
community to make it more relevant to poverty reduction and sustainable development.").

10 See, e.g., GEORGEB.N. AYITTEY, AFRICA INCHAOS275 (1998) ("That Western aid to Africa has been ineffective can no longer be
disputed."); TOMBETHELL, THENOBLESTTRIUMPH: PROPERTY ANDPROSPERITY THROUGH THEAGES190 (1998) ("By the end of the cold war, at least $2 trillion in foreign aid,
adjusted for inflation, had been sent to what was by then called the Third
World. Overall, this may have retarded economic development...."); JAMESMORTON, THEPOVERTY OFNATIONS: THEAIDDILEMMA AT THEHEART OFAFRICA25 (1996) ("The conclusion, that the sheer volume of aid is the problem not the cure, strikes at the
very basis of aid."); MARYB. ANDERSON, DONOHARM: HOWAID CANSUPPORTPEACE– ORWAR(1999)(aid can exacerbate civil conflict or can heal communities).

11 See, e.g., Science and Public Policy: Hearing before the House Subcomm. on Energy &
Natural Resources, 108thCong. (2004)(statements by Paul Driessen, Director, Economic Human Rights
Project, and a senior fellow with the Committee For A Constructive Tomorrow and
Center for the Defense of Free Enterprise, nonprofit public policy institutes
that focus on energy, the environment, economic development and international
affairs),
http://resourcescommittee.house.gov/
archives/108/testimony/2004/pauldriessen.pdf; Richard Tren & Roger Bate, When Politics Kills: Malaria and the DDT Story (Competitive Enterprise Inst., 2001),
http://www.cei.org/PDFs/malaria.pdf;
Roger E. Meiners & Andrew P. Morriss, Pesticides and Property Rights (Political Econ. Res. Center, 2001),
http://www.perc.org/pdf/ps22.pdf.
For more, see text at notes 37-62.

12 The World Health Organization, in 2002, estimated 3,925,236 deaths from the two
diseases combined. See infra notes 40, 48-50, 63-64 for details on the calculations.

13 Although there are multiple factors that contribute to a lack of development,
we shall not discuss all of them in this Article. Among the issues beyond the
scope of this Article are effects of culture, international debt, and certain
aspects of globalization.

14Alejandro Bendaña, Sources of Weapons Procurement, Diffusion and Violence in Central America, in SMALLARMSCONTROL: OLDWEAPONS, NEWISSUES169 (Jayantha Dhanapala et al., eds., 1999). See also Edward J. Laurance, Central America, Haiti and Colombia: Problems, Initiatives and Additional
Measures, in SMALL ARMS CONTROL 179 ("These weapons poured into the region from a variety of sources in the
1970s and 1980s, due mainly to the tensions produced by the Cold War."); Silvia
Cucovaz, Interrelationship between Illicit Trafficking in Small Arms, Drug Trafficking,
and Terrorist Groups in South America, in CURBING ILLICIT TRAFFICKING IN SMALL ARMS AND SENSITIVET ECHNOLOGIES: AN ACTION-ORIENTED AGENDA 33 (Péricles Gasparini Alves & Daiana Belinda Cipollone, eds., 1998); Chris
Smith, Areas of Major Concentration in the Use and Traffic of Small Arms, in SMALL ARMS CONTRO L83 ("This phenomenon has not been a purely post-Cold War reality, but rather
an evolving trend over many years and decades.").

15 SMALL ARMSSURVEY 2001: PROFILING THE PROBLEM199 (2001).

16 Michael Klare, An Overview of the Global Trade in Small Arms and Light Weapons, in SMALL ARMSCONTROL 7. The five colleges are Amherst, Hampshire, Mount Holyoke, Smith, and the
University of Massachusetts at Amherst.

17 See Lora Lumpe, Sara Meek & R. T. Naylor, Introduction to Gun Running, in RUNNING GUNS: THE GLOBAL BLACK MARKET IN SMALL ARMS 1 (Lora Lumpe, ed., 2000),
http://www.prio.no./page/Staff_detail/Staff_alpha_ALL/9375/
37402.html. Lumpe is a researcher and activist with the International Peace
Research Institute, in Oslo, Norway.

18 "Economic development" defined as raising a country's gross domestic product is different from "economic development" defined as reducing the
poverty rate. However, the difference is not particularly important for purposes
of this Article, since the countries manifesting development failure are usually
failures by any measurement.

19 See Obstacles to Progress, Cambridge Conference Report, in DEVELOPING THE THIRD WORLD: THE EXPERIENCE OF THE NINETEEN-SIXTIES

37 (Ronald Robinson, ed., 1971) ("It might seem at first sight that the more
the developing countries have tried to advance, the less they have succeeded,
for the statistics of growth for the 1960s look slightly disappointing."); See alsoGerald M. Meier, Development Decade Perspective, in DEVELOPING THETHIRDWORLD18 ("the aggregate rate of growth has been slowing down for many poor
countries in the first half of this decade as compared with the 1950s.").

20 ALBERTO HIRSCHMAN, A BIAS FO RHOPE 279 (1971).

21President John F. Kennedy,On the Alliance for Progress, 1961, Address by President Kennedy at a White House Reception for Latin American
Diplomats and Members of Congress (Mar. 13, 1961) in Modern History SourceBook,
http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/mod/
1961kennedy-afp1.html.

http://www.iadb.org/sds/doc/GrowthIneqDualCaus.pdf.
See alsoVICTOR BULMER-THOMAS, THEECONOMICHISTORY OFLATINAMERICASINCEINDEPENDENCE323 (1994). Bulmer-Thomas concluded: "The economic development of Latin
America since independence is a story of unfulfilled promise. Despite the abundance of natural resources and favorable ratio of land to labor, and after nearly two centuries of freedom from
colonial rule, not one republic has achieved the status of a developed country." Id.at 410.

26Sadig Rasheed & Shetu Chole, Human Development: An African Perspective, UNDP OCCASIONAL PAPER 17 (1994) sect. I ("The 1980s have repeatedly and emphatically been described as a
lost development decade....However, the fruits of independence had already begun to turn
sour by about the mid-1970s...."),
http://hdr.undp.org/docs/
publications/ocational_papers/oc17.htm. See alsoRupert Emerson, The Prospects for Democracy in Africa, in THE STATE OF NATIONS: CONSTRAINTS ON DEVELOPMENT IN INDEPENDENT AFRICA251-52 (Michael F. Lofchie, ed., 1971) ("Independence has not brought with it the booms of
development which it was hoped would follow in its train …. the UN Decade of
Development has so far been an unhappy failure, widening rather than closing the
gap between the rich and the poor countries...."); Robert M. Price, Neo-Colonialism and Ghana's Economic Decline: A Critical Assessment, 18 CANADIAN J. OF AFRICAN STUD. 163, 165 (1984):

The optimistic expectations that surrounded the independence celebrations in 1957 could not contrast more dramatically and
tragically with the reality that surrounded Ghana's silver jubilee, the anniversary in 1982 of twenty-five years of
that independence. Production in all sectors was abysmally low….Economic
deterioration had eroded Ghana's once impressive economic and social infrastructure. The
systems of health care, education, transportation, and communication were in disarray…Unable to obtain
paper, books, and food to feed its boarding students, the educational system was
showing signs of disintegration...Likewise the system of health care delivery
was in chaos.

Whereas between 1955 and 1962 Ghana's GNP increased at an average annual rate
of nearly 5 per cent, there was practically no growth at all by 1965, despite
the increase of central government expenditure by 78 per cent between 1960 and 1965
at constant prices. Since Ghana's estimated annual rate of population growth was 2.6 per cent, her economy was obviously retrogressing...While personal per capita
consumption declined by some 15 per cent between 1960 and 1966, the real wage
income of the minimum wage earner declined by some 45 per cent during this
period.

30 William Easterly & Ross Levine, Africa's Growth Tragedy: Policies and Ethnic Divisions, 112 Q. J. ECON. 1203, 1204-5 (1997). See also AYITTEY, supra n. 10, at 267 ("More than $400 billion in aid and credits have been pumped into
Africa since the 1960s...Yet all these efforts have borne negligible results.
The continent continues to sink deeper into an economic abyss."); DAVID E. SAHN, ADJUSTING TO POLICY FAILURE IN AFRICAN ECONOMIES 3 (1994)("Growth rates were generally in decline from 1976 to 1983 and then
followed an oscillating pattern in 1985-1990 that did not indicate any sustained
improvement in performance....When the exceedingly rapid rate of population increase is taken into account, the average growth rate of GDP per capita was in
fact negative over the entire period for all sub-Saharan Africa.").

35 In this Article, we have limited our discussion to malaria and HIV/ AIDS, but
other chronic infectious diseases, such as tuberculosis and hookworm, are
acknowledged burdens on human development. Although the total number of deaths from hookworm is small compared to the death
toll from AIDS, malaria, and TB, the economic effects can be large in developing
areas. See Hoyt Bleakley & Fabian Lange, Chronic Disease Burden and the Interaction of Education, Fertility and Growth, Nov. 22, 2003,
http://home.uchicago.edu/~fwlange/
HookwormPaper.pdf (visited 1/30/04); WORLD HEALTH ORGANIZATION, GLOBAL BURDEN OF DISEASE 2002 (hookworm death toll in 2002 was 2,943),
http://www3.who.int/whosis/menu.cfm?path=evidence
,burden,burden_estimates%20, burden_estimates_2002,burden_ estimates_2002_ Region&language =english. See also J.M. Hawdon, T. Li, B. Zahn & M.S. Blouin, Genetic Structure of Populations of the Human Hookworm, Necator americanus, in
China, 10 MOLECULAR ECOLOGY 1433, 1437 (2001) ("Infection with the human hookworms…remains a burden on the
health and economies of many developing nations in the tropics...."); Michael
Cappello,Pathogenesis of Hookworm Anemia and Malnutrition(Research in Pediatric Parasitology, Yale Child Health Research
Center)("anemia and protein energy malnutrition attributable to intestinal hookworm infection affects between 1 and 2 billion people worldwide, including approximately
500 million children. Children with heavy hookworm infection suffer potentially
severe delays in both physical and intellectual development."),
http://info.med.yale.edu/pediat/PedID/Cappello/
Labsite/research_hookworm.html; Dick Thompson, Coordinates 2002: Charting Progress Against AIDS, TB and Malaria1 (World Health Organ. 2002)("Any effective effort to reduce the burden of
disease faced by the world's poorest people must concentrate on AIDS,
tuberculosis (TB) and malaria. Combined, these three diseases could account for
500 million or more illnesses a year and at least 6 million deaths.").

44 Gallup is a Research Fellow at the Center for International Development, an Institute Associate at the Harvard Institute for International Development, and a Lecturer in the Department of Economics at Harvard
University.

45 Sachs is the Director of the Center for International Development and the
Harvard Institute for International Development, and the Galen L. Stone
Professor of International Trade in the Department of Economics.

46 Gallup & Sachs, at Abstract. Gallup and Sachs controlled for variables such as historic, geographic, economic and policy factors, among others,
but did not control for the tropical cluster diseases. See also Elsa V. Artadi & Xavier Sala-i-Martin, The Economic Tragedy of the XXth Century: Growth in Africa, Columbia University, Department of Economics, Discussion Paper Series,
Discussion Paper #:0203-17 13 (2003) ("if Africa had no malaria over the last four decades, its annual growth
rate would have been 1.25 percentage points larger...."); Kara Hanson, Catherine
Goodman, Jo Lines, Sylvia Meek, David Bradley & Anne Mills, The Economics of Malaria Control Interventions, (World Health Organization, 2004),
http://www.globalforumhealth.org/
FilesUpld/78.pdf (visited Dec. 29, 2004).

48 The total annual number of deaths from SALW is estimated to be approximately
500,000. See SMALL ARMS SURVEY 2004: RIGHTS AT RISK 174-75 (2004) (estimating that the annual number of firearm-related deaths
ranges in non-combat situations ranges from 200,000-270,000. Additionally, "In
2001, the Small Arms Survey cited the established estimate of 300,000 small
arms-related deaths in armed conflict each year....There seems little doubt that
the global estimate will be revised downward.") Cf.David B. Kopel, Paul Gallant & Joanne D. Eisen, Global Deaths from Firearms: Searching for Plausible Estimates, 8 TEX. REV. L. & POL. 114 (2003)(criticizing earlier estimates of global firearms deaths as not
based on sound empirical data; also noting that estimates of 300,000 annual
deaths from SALW in wartime were based on the mistaken assumption that all
wartime deaths are caused by SALW, and no deaths are caused by heavier weapons).

49 See Anuraj H. Shankar, Nutritional Modulation of Malaria Morbidity and Mortality, 182 J. INFECTIOUS DISEASES S37, S37 (Supp. 1, 2000) ("Malaria currently accounts for about 200 million
morbid episodes and 2-3 million deaths each year, estimates that have been
increasing over the last three decades….") Morbidity is defined by the Centers
for Disease Control and Prevention as "Any departure, subjective or objective, from a state of physiological or psychological well-being.",
http://www.cdc.gov/reproductivehealth/epi_gloss2.htm.

50In war, the wounded-to-killed ratio from firearm injuries has been generally
estimated at 2:1, but has been noted to be as high as 13:1. Robin M. Coupland
and David R. Meddings, Mortality Associated with Use of Weapons in Armed Conflicts, Wartime
Atrocities, and Civilian Mass Shootings: Literature Review, 319 BRIT. MED. J. 407, 407 (1999). In one extreme instance, the ratio was reported as high
as 45:1. Id.at

408. See alsoFirearm Injury Center at Penn, Firearm Injury in the U.S., at 4 ("An estimated two nonfatal injuries occur for every firearm death…."),
http://www.uphs.upenn.edu/ficap/resourcebook/pdf/
monograph.pdf,; GARYKLECK, POINTBLANK: GUNS ANDVIOLENCE IN AMERICA116 (1991)(ratio of non-fatal to fatal gunshot wounds in the

U.S. is approximately 5.7:1). In general, "the wounded to killed ratios for all conventional weapons are comparable."
Coupland & Meddings, at 408.

If we accept Coupland and Meddings' high figure (13 firearms woundings per one
fatality), and if we apply the 13:1 ratio to SALW in general and we use the
common estimate of 500,000 annual SALW-related deaths, we arrive at a morbidity
figure of approximately 6.5 million non-fatal SALW-related injuries.

Thus, the upper plausible estimate for SALW morbidity is 6.5 million non-fatal
cases per year. In contrast, there are 300 million to 500 million episodes of
malaria among the affected population each year.

52 Joel G. Breman, Andréa Egan & Gerald Keusch, The Intolerable Burden of Malaria: A New Look at the Numbers, 64 AM. J. TROPICAL MED. & HYGIENE iv, v (2001). For a discussion of cerebral malaria as distinguished from other
manifestations of the disease, see "Cerebral Malaria," in The Malaria Website (Brown Univ.) ("an acute, widespread disease of the brain which is accompanied by fever"),
http:// www.brown.edu/Courses/Bio_160/Projects1999/malaria/cermal.html.

58 See Richard Black, Korean Fish Joins Malaria Fight, BBC NEWS, Dec. 7, 2003 ("Scientists in South Korea have found a local fish that could
help control the spread of malaria. The fish, called the muddy loach, eats
mosquito larvae and can completely remove them from rice fields.") The BBC news
item further stated "The idea of using fish in this way dates back a century or
so, but in recent decades it has fallen out of favour as more modern techniques
for combating malaria, such as chemical insecticides, drugs and bednets have
taken precedence." Richard Black, a BBC science correspondent, also reported on
a similar strategy in India. Fish Eat Away at Malaria in India, BBC NEWS, Jan. 5, 2004 (The BBC report noted that, according to Dr. VP Sharma, former
director of India's Malaria Research Institute, "fish had virtually eliminated malaria-carrying Anophelesmosquitoes from some districts, though he [Dr. Sharma] cautioned that the
strategy did not work everywhere.").

Six years ago, the WHO and its Roll Back Malaria campaign promised to halve malaria rates by 2010. Since then, rates have
actually increased by over 10 percent. A primary reason is that WHO and RBM – as
well as UNICEF and the U.S. Agency for International Development – refuse to
permit, promote or fund pesticide use to control mosquitoes, or even acknowledge the critical role of DDT and other
pesticides in preventing malaria.

60 Donald R. Roberts, Larry L. Laughlin, Paul Hsheih, and Llewellyn J. Legters, DDT, Global Strategies, and a Malaria Control Crisis in South America, 3 EMERGING INFECTIOUS DISEASES(Number 3, July-Sept. 1997)(web edition). See alsoP aul Driessen, The Unnecessary Scourge, TECHCENTRALSTATION, Mar. 8, 2004 (Driessen is director of the Economic Human Rights Project; his
article was adapted from his testimony before the U.S. House of Representatives
Subcommittee on Energy and Natural Resources, cited in note 11. Driessen's
article provides a concise history of the successful use of DDT in the eradication of mosquito-borne disease and of the subsequent unscientific activism which virtually eliminated DDT's use world-wide.).

61 Roberts et al. See also Nicholas D. Kristof, N.Y. TIMES, Jan. 8, 2005: "But overall, one of the best ways to protect people is to
spray the inside of a hut, about once a year, with DDT. This uses tiny amounts
of DDT – 450,000 people can be protected with the same amount that was applied
in the 1960's to a single 1,000-acre American cotton farm."

one can calculate the number of under-5 deaths that could be saved through
prevention of mother-to-child transmission. Use of the simpler and less costly
interventions by all HIV-infected pregnant women could have reduced deaths in children younger than 5 years of age in the year 1999 by between 100000 and 250000
in countries in sub-Saharan Africa.

Id.at 288 The authors noted that the cost estimate per year would be US$
640million. The figures of 100,000 to 250,000 correspond to between 20-50% of the approximate annual global estimate of SALW deaths in allage groups.

76 Food & Agriculture Organization, FAO Reports a Setback in the War Against Hunger, Nov. 25, 2003,
http://www.fao.org/english/newsroom/news/2003/24779-en.html.
See also Africa Devastated by Aids, BBC NEWS, Nov. 28, 2001 ("In Burkina Faso, 20% of rural families have cut back their
farming activities because of Aids.").

77 FAO Reports a Setback in the War Against Hunger.

78 Monty G. Marshall, Major Episodes of Political Violence 19461999(2000),
http://members.aol.com/CSPmgm/warlist.htm.
Marshall identified 61 armed conflicts that commenced between 1990 and 1999;
the conflicts resulted in 1,542,500 deaths. Examination of the data by 5-year
intervals reveals that 38 armed conflicts commenced between 1990 and 1994,
resulting in 1,273,500 deaths, and accounting for 82.6% of the total deaths that
occurred in the 1990s from armed conflicts that commenced during the decade. In
the latter half of the decade (19951999), only 23 armed conflicts commenced, resulting in an additional 269,000
deaths. Thus, only 37.7% of armed conflicts occurred during the last 5 years of
the decade, and these conflicts accounted for only about 17.4% of the total
deaths that occurred in the 1990s from armed conflicts that commenced during
that decade. Admittedly, not all deaths from these armed conflicts would have
been tallied by the time Marshall's paper was published, making it likely that
the total would be a little higher.

86 See Global AIDS Alliance, Key Principles for Implementing the President's Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief, Dec. 12, 2003,
http://www.globalaidsalliance.org/gaa_recommendations.cfm: ("
Systematic, high-level, entrenched corruption in the prescription drug and
commodities sector by many African governments is a critical obstacle preventing
progress in combating HIV/AIDS. There are indications that up to 30% of drug sector resources funded by the World Bank are
lost to corruption.") See also AIDS-Africa-Corruption: AIDS Drugs Money Diverted, Wasted in Africa:
World Bank, AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE, Sept. 13, 1999. (According to Callisto Madavo, World Bank deputy president
for Africa: "Too much money is being wasted and too much money is being diverted...."); American Foundation for AIDS Research, amfAR's Report on AIDS in Africa: Zimbabwe,
http://www.amfar.org/cgi-bin/iowa/programs/globali/
record.html?record=86:

While Zimbabwe has taken measures to curb the epidemic through its National
AIDS Coordination Programme, government corruption and mismanagement have hindered AIDS
programs. Since January 2000, Zimbabwe's government has levied a 3 percent tax
on personal and corporate income, ostensibly to fund AIDS control and prevention programs…the government has not accounted for how the funds will be spent….

See also Mpumalanga Corruption: Manana and the Health Department, Carte Blanche Interactive, Aug. 31, 2003 (Kate Barry Producer),
http://www.mnet.co.za/CarteBlanche/Display/
Display.asp?Id=2307. (In the South African province of Mpumalanga, "According
to Price Waterhouse Coopers there was gross mismanagement in the handling of
HIV/AIDS funds.").

87 See Dagi Kimani, Has War on Aids Been Compromised?, DAILY NATION ON THEWEB, July 5, 2002,
http://www.nationaudio.com/News/
DailyNation/05072002/Comment/Comment85.html (In April 2002, Kenya's National
Aids Control Council (NACC) "failed to win financial support from the Global Fund to Fight Aids, Tuberculosis and Malaria…."
The NACC is a branch of the Office of the President, but that Office is "often
associated with corruption, misappropriation and inefficiency…." Many donors
find this situation unacceptable.) See also Elizabeth Piper, HIV/AIDS: Ukraine Appeals to West for Help to Fight AIDS, ARTUKRAINE.COM, Feb. 13, 2004 ("late last month the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis
and Malaria suspended pay
ments due to mismanagement."), http://www.artukraine.com/uasupport/
appeal_west.htm; Sharier Khan, Bangladesh Government Outsources Health to NGOs, ONEWORLD.NET, June 15, 2004 ("scores of key health programs in Bangladesh [are] stymied by
corruption, mismanagement and political interference....the World Bank (WB) withdrew around half
of the $52-million fund it had provided for the [HIV/ AIDS] project."),
http://www.oneworld.net/article/view/93093/1/58.

88 Review of the Problem of Human Immunodeficiency Virus/Acquired Immunodeficiency Syndrome in All its Aspects, Special Session of the General Assembly on HIV/AIDS, Report of the
Secretary-General, 55th Sess., Agenda Item 179, U.N. Doc. A/55/779 (2001),
http://www.un.org/documents/ga/docs/55/a55779.pdf.

93 SeeRichard H. Solomon, Foreword, in TED ROBERT GURR, PEOPLE VERSUS STATES ix (2000): "Conflict, of course, is intrinsic to human society and is often an
agent of reform, adaptation, and development." Solomon is President of the United States Institute of Peace.

98 Country Profile: Zambia, BBC NEWS, Nov. 26, 2003 ("Zambia has moved from being a major copper producer and
potentially one of the continent's richest countries at independence in 1964 to
one of the world's poorest."),
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/africa/
country_profiles/1069294.stm. Despite the world-wide drop in copper prices in
1975, Zambia still had a flourishing agricultural sector, and should not have
been so economically devastated.

99 World Bank Ready to Assist If..., THE TIMES OF ZAMBIA, Dec. 10, 2003.

It is widely acknowledged that the burden of massive debt hinders development.
A first cause of the debt burden is kleptocracy, which originally stole the
funds from foreign loans, rather than investing them in projects which would
improve economic growth, and would generate the revenue to repay the debt. A
second cause is investment of the non-stolen money in central planning projects
which enhanced urban elite control of the economy, while undermining property
rights and economic freedom--and thereby harmed economic development. See, e.g., Paul Craig Roberts, Third World Debt: Legacy of Development Experts, 7 CATOJ. 231 (1987),
http://www.cato.org/pubs/journal/cj7n1/cj7n1-12.pdf;
James Bovard, The World Bank vs. The World's Poor, Cato Inst. Policy Analysis no. 92 (1987),
http://www.cato.org/pub_display.php?pub_id=958&full=1.

101 Country Profile: Zambia, BBC NEWS("Aids is blamed for decimating the cream of Zambian professionals-- including engineers and politicians--and
malaria remains a major problem.").

106 GEORGE B.N. AYITTEY, AFRICA IN CHAOS 270 (1998)(noting that western economic advisers encouraged a high level of
Zambian government control of the economy).

107 Economic Challenge for Zambia, BBC NEWS, Jan. 2, 2002:

From the 1960s right through to the early 1990s, under President Kenneth
Kaunda, Zambia veered to the left. The country's huge copper mines became public
property, as did its farms, in an attempt to solve issues of ownership once and for
all. The result was underperformance – exacerbated by corruption at the top as
Mr. Kaunda's United National Independence Party made Zambia's de facto one-party
state into the law of the land.

108 Fraser, Zambia's ‘Matrix of Plunder'.

109 Kenya Seeks ‘Ghosts' to Ease Budget Woes, BBC NEWS, July 18, 2003. Cf. Liberia Fights ‘Ghost Soldiers', BBC NEWS, Aug. 17, 2001 ("Liberia has discovered that some 2,000 soldiers out of its
14,000 strong army do not exist." Senior officers have been collecting the
salaries of those "ghosts.")

114 See Eugene Obiero, Poverty in Kenya
, at Comments ¶2, http:// www.ucalgary.ca/G8/tidalthought/Kenya%20%20Povery%
20in%20Kenya.pdf (visited 12/25/03) ("The introduction of the single party
regime by our founding father introduced room for unprecedented corruption and looting of public coffers....it will be a gross
distortion of the truth to say that corruption is something that started in
Kenya recently.").

116 Kenya Hunts for Missing Billions, BBC NEWS, Dec. 16, 2003. See also Hearings Before the House Comm. on Fin. Services, 107thCong. (2002) (statement of Michael Chege),
http://
financialservices.house.gov/media/pdf/050902mc.pdf (
"The authoritative British newsletter Africa Confidential,put Moi's external bank holdings at US $3billion two years ago. He denied it
publicly but insisted that he could not vouch for his siblings who, together with Moi's supreme confidante Nicholas Biwott have been often linked to major corrupt
deals in Kenya.").

117 Corruption ‘Costs Kenya $1bn a Year', BBC NEWS, May 30, 2003.

118 Id.See also Ishbel Matheson, Poll Drives Change Through Kenya, BBC NEWS, Jan. 4, 2003 ("Kenya is, in the words of a famous pop tune here, ‘nychi ya
kitu kidogo.' In Swahili, that means the ‘land of something small' – a euphemism for the ‘land of graft'.").

119 ‘Day of Reckoning' for Kenya Graft, BBC NEWS, Oct. 20, 2003. See also First Deputy Managing Director Anne Krueger's Statement at the
Conclusion of a Visit to Kenya, International Monetary Fund, Press Release No. 03/212 (Dec. 4, 2003).; Joint Statement of the Government of the Republic of Kenya and the World Bank, Consultative Group Meeting for Kenya, Nairobi, (Nov. 24-25, 2003) ("H.E.
President Kibaki, welcomed the delegates and assured them that Kenya is committed to
good governance, sound economic management and zero tolerance to corruption."),
http://siteresources.worldbank.org/
KENYAEXTN/Resources/final_joint_statement.pdf.

121 Kenya Seeks ‘Ghosts' to Ease Budget Woes, BBC NEWS, July 18, 2003. ("In March 2003, wage spending took up 34.6% of government
spending – but development spending was just 11.6%, meaning that even a small
saving on wages and salaries could greatly boost the development budget.").

As Kenyans this year launch a concerted war against corruption, which in
governance is taken basically to mean the privatization of public funds through
illegal means, they will also have to fight extremely hard to stop the looting
of public coffers in legal ways….in what looks like a conspiracy by the top
echelons of the political leadership and the civil service, the salaries of top public servants
are being pushed to obscene levels….

See also Gray Phombeah, Little to Celebrate as Kenya Turns 40, BBC NEWS, Dec. 11, 2003 ("Despite dramatic moves to tackle corruption and the provision
of free primary education places, internal feuding in the ruling coalition has
undermined the credibility of the new government and eroded confidence among Kenyans in the new era."); Mugo Njeru, Graft: Kenya Still Among the Worst, THE NATION(Nairobi), Dec. 10, 2004 ("Parliament and political parties are ranked by
Kenyans as some of the most corrupt institutions, a new report by Transparency
International reveals….").

123 TED ROBERT GURR, PEOPLES VERSUS STATES: MINORITIES AT RISK IN THE NEW CENTURY 261 (2000)("President Moi, a Kalenjin, encouraged communal violence against
the Kikuyu and the Luo....").

124 Id.

125 Police are Kenya's Top Killers, BBC NEWS, Jan. 14, 2002. See also Police Could Be at Centre of Extortion Ring in City, THE EASTAFRICAN STANDARD(Nairobi), Jan. 26, 2004.

126 Phombeah, Little to Celebrate as Kenya Turns 40.

127 See Standard Team, PC Cracks the Whip on Traffic Policemen, THE EAST AFRICAN STANDARD(Nairobi), Dec. 13, 2004. ("Eastern Provincial Commissioner John Nandasaba yesterday accused traffic police officers in
the province of giving the force a bad image by extorting money from
motorists."); Mugo Njeru, Graft: Kenya Still Among the Worst, THENATION(Nairobi), Dec. 10, 2004 ("The sharp focus on corruption in the police force,
is reflected in the high level of insecurity in the country. ‘As long as bribery plays a significant role in the
operations of the Kenya Police Force, it will not be able to effectively perform
its core function of guaranteeing the security of the citizens,' said the TI
[Transparency International]-Kenya director."); Police Could Be at Centre of Extortion Ring in City, THE EASTAFRICAN STANDARD(Nairobi), Jan. 26, 2004; Police are Kenya's Top Killers, BBC NEWS, Jan. 14, 2002; Immigration and Refugee Board (IRB) of Canada,
Country of Origin Research: Kenya, http://www.irb-cisr.gc.ca/en/re
search/
ndp/ref/?action=view&doc=ken42855fe:

Recent corroborating sources noted an increase in incidents of torture by
Kenyan police…One source estimated the number of victims of torture and
extrajudiciary killings in 2003 at 358…while another had the number at 458,
compared with 140 cases reported in 2002…Many incidents involved the rape of
women in police cells to get evidence….

128 Phombeah, Little to Celebrate as Kenya Turns 40 ("Because of mass unemployment, there is rising crime – armed robbery and
carjackings – in Nairobi and other major towns."); Cf. Sabala Kizito, The Proliferation, Circulation and Use of Illegal Firearms in Urban Centres.
The Case of Nairobi – Kenya(Bonn International Center for Conversion, 2001)
http://www.saligad.org/workshops/addid/
papers_ conference_saligad.html; GODFREY ANYUMBA, PLANNING FOR CRIME PREVENTION: THE CASE OF THE CITY OF NAIROBI (SaferAfrica, 2003).

129 Robert Ndwiga, Security Firms Divided over Gun Licenses, THE EAST AFRICAN (Nairobi), May 7, 2001. Also noting:

Security companies are lobbying the Kenya government to issue about 6,000
guards with firearms in the wake of escalating armed robberies in urban
centers....According to the firearms Act cap 114, part 11, Section 4 (1), "No
person shall purchase, acquire or have in his possession any firearm or
ammunition unless he holds a firearm certificate in force at the time"...Illegal
firearm possession attracts 15-year imprisonment in Kenya. Guns are granted by the licensing
officer if he is satisfied that the applicant has a good reason for "purchasing,
acquiring or having in his possession the firearm or ammunition."

131 The authors of SMALL ARMS SURVEY 2003: DEVELOPMENT DENIED (2003) cite researchers who ignore or minimize the social benefits of civilian
firearm ownership, and who emphasize the negative social costs of firearms
ownership. For quantification of some of the social benefits of firearms, see
Gary Kleck & Marc Gertz, Armed Resistance to Crime: The Prevalence and Nature of Self-Defense with a Gun, 86 J. CRIM. L. & CRIMINOLOGY150 (1995)(non-government actors in the U.S. accounts for approximately 2.5 million instances of defensive gun uses from
criminal attack, annually). For the non-relationship of arms density and social
problems, see, e.g., Don B. Kates & Daniel D. Polsby, Long-Term Nonrelationship of Widespread and Increasing Firearm Availability to Homicide in the United States, 4 HOMICIDE STUD. 185, 185 (2000):

These data do not show a correlation over the long term between the
distribution of firearms in the population at large and homicide rates. The two
variables do cross occasionally, but they do not do so consistently. Rather, the
trend in the period 1973-1997 was one of very large increases in firearms
accompanied by essentially flat, even diminishing, homicide rates. That is the
general rule for the period since the end of World War II to date.

134 The sculpture, named "Non-Violence," or "The Knotted Gun," was designed by
Fredrik Reuterswäld, and was given by the government of Luxembourg to the United
Nations,
http://www.un.int/luxembourg/
knotted%20gun.htm. Many gun prohibitionists equate non-violence with the
absence of firearms, but they may be wrong. As we have detailed in another
article, a world without firearms in the hands of "non-state actors" would
likely be a much more dangerous and violent world, because physically stronger
people could attack smaller victims with impunity, and because victims of
genocide and oppression would have no practical means of resistance. See Dave Kopel, Paul Gallant & Joanne Eisen, A World Without Guns, NAT'LREV. ONLINE, Dec. 05, 2001,
http://www.nationalreview.com/kopel/kopel120501.shtml.

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